We all make choices every day about which shoes to wear, but why do we choose the shoes we do? Today, buying, wearing and collecting shoes is for many of us a habit that borders on a fetish. Even those of us who consider shoes to be trivial are aware of how the wrong choice of footwear can have dire social consequences.

This book explores the history of shoes and how different types of footwear have come to mean different things about the people who wear them. Organized around four main types – boots, sneakers, high heels and sandals – this book explains their origins, the impact of technology on how shoes are produced and worn, their designs and how they have come to have social meaning far beyond their use to protect the foot. Elizabeth Semmelhack reveals the anecdotes and scandals, successes and failures, dislikes and obsessions of the makers, wearers and observers who helped to create the movements and fashions of footwear.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, Shoes is a thoroughly surprising history of an everyday item. It will appeal not only to followers of fashion, but to those interested in social history and identity.

EXTRACT: to read and download an extract from the Boots chapter please click here.

‘[One of] this season’s most giftworthy reads to satisfy every bibliophile on your list . . . [Semmelhack] explores the shifting status and social meaning of footwear and its evolving cultural value across designs and eras.’ – Globe and Mail, Toronto

‘Semmelhack’s hisory of shoes is neither an investigation into design nor an exhaustive chronology, but rather an informed and breezy examination of the meanings assigned to footwear through the ages. Tracing the development of four styles of shoes familiar to both men and women today – sandals, high heels, boots and sneakers – with lively anecdote she considers them as signifiers of status and gender, as reflections of our self-image within the prevailing culture of our times, and as tools to protect certain values and power structures, or to threaten them . . . Since there have been shoes there have been judgements about shoes, a relentless chorus of disapproval at every adaption and adoption. This is Semmelhack’s territory, airing the prejudice, the criticism and the absurdity.’ – World of Interiors

‘Semmelhack is senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum, and wow does she know how to make her subject engaging . . . Semmelhack's book takes issues of identity politics firmly in hand, yet she writes like a true art historian. The result is an incredibly edifying, deeply entertaining, manifestly readable look inside everyday objects that most of us are too busy to truly consider. The book is a more than adequate reference guide for those in the industry, a sample of how to properly curate and discuss a museum exhibit, a lovely coffee table book, and a highly readable adventure in general. This is one of those rare books that truly offers something substantive for everyone who might not usually think about picking it up. On its face, such a daily subject may not seem worth getting excited about, but Shoes is not at all prosaic and it's quite difficult to put down after the first few pages.’ – Popmatters.com

‘Elizabeth Semmelhack’s work sheds a new and fascinating light on footwear, looking at its social significance and how it has changed over the years. It is an absolute must for those interested in the subject.’ – Manolo Blahnik

‘This book shows us all the fashion, art, and design that allowed shoes to become a powerful cultural phenomenon. From the feet to the street to the commercial mountain peaks! And the chapter on sneakers represents how sneakers became not just a fact of life, but a way of life.’ – Darryl DMC McDaniels

‘In Elizabeth Semmelhack’s wonderful new book she uses her extraordinary knowledge of shoes to shed light on the cultural and ideological over the more familiar accounts of fashion’s ever evolving designs. Through vivid examples and rare illustrations, she invests the four categories of sandal, boot, high heel and sneaker with new meaning. It will become essential reading for students and scholars alike.’ – Judith Clark, Professor of Fashion and Museology, University of the Arts, London

‘[One of] this season’s most giftworthy reads to satisfy every bibliophile on your list . . . [Semmelhack] explores the shifting status and social meaning of footwear and its evolving cultural value across designs and eras.’ – Globe and Mail, Toronto

‘Semmelhack’s hisory of shoes is neither an investigation into design nor an exhaustive chronology, but rather an informed and breezy examination of the meanings assigned to footwear through the ages. Tracing the development of four styles of shoes familiar to both men and women today – sandals, high heels, boots and sneakers – with lively anecdote she considers them as signifiers of status and gender, as reflections of our self-image within the prevailing culture of our times, and as tools to protect certain values and power structures, or to threaten them . . . Since there have been shoes there have been judgements about shoes, a relentless chorus of disapproval at every adaption and adoption. This is Semmelhack’s territory, airing the prejudice, the criticism and the absurdity.’ – World of Interiors

‘Semmelhack is senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum, and wow does she know how to make her subject engaging . . . Semmelhack's book takes issues of identity politics firmly in hand, yet she writes like a true art historian. The result is an incredibly edifying, deeply entertaining, manifestly readable look inside everyday objects that most of us are too busy to truly consider. The book is a more than adequate reference guide for those in the industry, a sample of how to properly curate and discuss a museum exhibit, a lovely coffee table book, and a highly readable adventure in general. This is one of those rare books that truly offers something substantive for everyone who might not usually think about picking it up. On its face, such a daily subject may not seem worth getting excited about, but Shoes is not at all prosaic and it's quite difficult to put down after the first few pages.’ – Popmatters.com

‘Elizabeth Semmelhack’s work sheds a new and fascinating light on footwear, looking at its social significance and how it has changed over the years. It is an absolute must for those interested in the subject.’ – Manolo Blahnik

‘This book shows us all the fashion, art, and design that allowed shoes to become a powerful cultural phenomenon. From the feet to the street to the commercial mountain peaks! And the chapter on sneakers represents how sneakers became not just a fact of life, but a way of life.’ – Darryl DMC McDaniels

‘In Elizabeth Semmelhack’s wonderful new book she uses her extraordinary knowledge of shoes to shed light on the cultural and ideological over the more familiar accounts of fashion’s ever evolving designs. Through vivid examples and rare illustrations, she invests the four categories of sandal, boot, high heel and sneaker with new meaning. It will become essential reading for students and scholars alike.’ – Judith Clark, Professor of Fashion and Museology, University of the Arts, London

Elizabeth Semmelhack is Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto. She is the author of Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture (2015) and Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe (2008).